Laurens Kemp, PhD candidate
Laurens studies conditioning effects and how they relate to psychopathology. Appetitive and aversive conditioning effects are usually studied separately, but in his project he attempts to capture these in a single measure, to determine whether it is the difference between appetitive and aversive conditioning effects that predicts certain aspects of psychopathology rather than the strength of either of these effects alone. This is done both through online tests where participants learn appetitive and aversive associations by winning or losing points, and through lab tests where participants learn them by receiving sweet or bitter tastes. Currently, he is working on a study in which participants’ tendency towards appetitive or aversive psychopathology is tested by comparing individual networks of symptoms and mood states between participants who learn better from either appetitive or aversive associations.
Publications that I’m most proud of
Aversive conditioning is impaired in impulsive individuals: A study on learning asymmetries. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 2024.
Aversive conditioning is impaired in impulsive individuals: a study on learning asymmetries. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. In this study, I created a novel method of assessing individual differences in sensitivity to appetitive and aversive learning, which showed that high impulsivity is more strongly associated with aversive learning rather than appetitive. These results show that measuring both appetitive and aversive learning can give us greater insight into a person’s behavioral tendencies, and may explain why they are more or less prone to psychopathology.
